Poetry Archives

“There is no God,” the wicked saith,
  “And truly it’s a blessing,
For what He might have done with us
  It’s better only guessing.”
“There is no God,” a youngster thinks,
  “or really, if there may be,
He surely did not mean a man
  Always to be a baby.”
“There is no God, or if there is,”
  The tradesman thinks, “’twere funny
If He should take it ill in me
  To make a little money.”
“Whether there be,” the rich man says,
  “It matters very little,
For I and mine, thank somebody,
  Are not in want of victual.”
Some others, also, to themselves,
  Who scarce so much as doubt it,
Think there is none, when they are well,
  And do not think about it.
But country folks who live beneath
  The shadow of the steeple;
The parson and the parson’s wife,
  And mostly married people;
Youths green and happy in first love,
  So thankful for illusion;
And men caught out in what the world
  Calls guilt, in first confusion;
And almost everyone when age,
  Disease, or sorrows strike him,
Inclines to think there is a God,
  Or something very like Him.